Misunderstanding Conflict

When you tell people that every story needs ‘conflict,’ some of them bail at it, claiming that their story will be fine without it and that it’s an outdated concept and modern stories can do very well without. While some of those people do indeed refer to experimental writing which goes against all story rules, quite some also misunderstand what ‘conflict’ means in this case. They think it refers to big action, to violence, to fighting, to explosions, or to other things important to your regular action movie. However, that is not what ‘conflict’ means in this case.

Of course, ‘conflict’ in your story can refer to a fight, a physical confrontation. Depending on the kind of story you write, it will end with the villain and the hero facing off with weapons in the middle of a burning airship. But it doesn’t have to be one. You can have the airship pass peacefully above as the hero of your tale is looking for a new pizza place, because their favourite one is closed on short notice because of someone’s illness.

‘Conflict’ in case of a story means that there must be something the character is going for, something they want, but can’t have immediately. It can be the death of a man who killed their whole family. It can also be a good pizza after work. ‘Conflict’ simply means there must be something happening and the hero must have an agenda in that. Even if the agenda is merely a piece of salami pizza (with extra cheese).

Your story can be based on high stakes, on the lives of millions hanging in the balance. In that case, the ‘conflict’ is high stakes, too. It will, most likely, include heroics like fighting or jumping out of flying airships. Or it will include a lot of political action or hacking or last-minute bomb defusing. But it doesn’t have to be.

A lot of ‘slice of life’ stories fail not because the stakes are low, but because the stakes are missing. Because they just describe the average day of their average, low-profile hero. Then they wonder about why nobody likes the story much. The reason is that there’s no ‘conflict,’ there’s nothing which interferes with the hero’s agenda of living this day like every other.

Imagine instead a story which runs like this: your hero is the type who is almost compulsively organized and wants for every day to run like clockwork. If the bus is late or the alarm clock doesn’t work, it’s already a very threatening thing for them. But you still want a ‘slice of life’ story, so actual fighting and explosions are not on the menu. Your hero gets up as every morning. You drop hints they’re very set in their ways, live every day the same way. They have a schedule for their lunches, too, since you shouldn’t eat the same thing every day - not healthy and sicknesses do interrupt the scheduled life. It’s Tuesday and Tuesday is, of course, Taco Day. So, punctually, your hero drops their pen and clocks out for lunch. They walk to the taco place - and it’s closed (for repairs or because an airship fell on it, take your choice, the reason doesn’t really matter here). What is your hero going to do? It’s out of the question to go to the place they went to the day before. Two times pizza in a row isn’t allowed. And if they went to the place for the next day a day early, where would they go tomorrow? But the clock is ticking and your hero is hungry. They have to make a decision. They have to go against their usual behaviour. If they want food (that’s their agenda), they’ll have to find another place to get it. And, eventually, before they run out of time (it’s only lunch break and, sadly, lunch break is not infinite), they will find a place to eat, but it will be hard for them. That is your ‘conflict.’ You are forcing your hero to go against what they usually do, you are forcing them to overcome an obstacle to get what they want.

How big or small the ‘conflict’ is depends on your story. A thriller demands a big ‘conflict,’ something which endangers a lot of people and will, most likely, feature fighting and other violent actions. As seen above, a ‘slice of life’ story or a children’s story or a love story often get by with much smaller ‘conflicts.’

So when you start writing a story, ask yourself what the ‘conflict’ is. Will it be a fight between the hero and the villain, both vying for the same thing (see this post on MacGuffins for further ideas)? Will it be a love story and the family or another suitor will present a problem? Will it be a little story about the little world of a little person changing? To identify the ‘conflict’ is to know what the story is steering towards and where the troubles will come from and how the story will play out. You might still need a while to get it together (especially if you’re a discovery writer like me), but you will at least know the general direction.

Do not misunderstand the word ‘conflict’ when it comes to storytelling. It’s not about violence and doesn’t suggest the only stories worth writing are those with brutality and bloodshed. It’s simply about making sure your hero has to work for what they want instead of being handed it on a silver platter.

About Social Justice Warriors

…and why they’re not bad as a such. Honestly, whenever I see someone who uses the expression ‘Social Justice Warrior’ (SJW for short) as a slight or to insult someone, I wonder why they would do that. I mean, being a warrior is cool. Justice is cool. Social things often are cool, too. What is bad, then, about being a Social Justice Warrior?

Of course, it’s only a very small group of people overall who have it for SJWs. People for whom social justice as a concept is the root of all evil and thus whoever protects it must be evil, too. And those are the people I don’t get. Really, I don’t. Like … not at all.

I understand that promoting social justice means that people will gain more equality. People who are today seen as the privileged majority (which is not really a majority world-wide in some aspects) will no longer hold a privilege, but, and that’s the important part here, they won’t stand to lose anything, either.

That is the point which they seem not to understand. When slavery was abolished in the US, slavers really stood to lose something - because you can’t do that without taking the right to own slaves from people. So the slavers actually lost a right when slavery was abolished. But when stories are diversified and not every action hero is a straight white man or when women are paid equally to men or when “Battlefield V” introduces female and POC character models for use, nobody’s rights are taken away. Because there was never a right that every hero would be a straight white man who looked interchangeable (as the picture below this paragraph shows). Because there was never a right that a man has to earn more money simply for having a penis or a Y chromosome (see this post on another of my blogs about sex and gender). Because nobody is going to force them to play a female character in “Battlefield V” - they will be an option, not the only choice.

Pictured above: the amazing variety of heroes in video games

There was a certain privilege granted to those who complain about the changes, but the point about the privilege is that it is granted, it’s not set in stone. It’s not a law.

In my experience, those who complain about SJWs are usually people who aren’t very comfortable in their own life. They hold on tightly to what little comfort their unearned privileges grant them and complain loudly about someone else getting that privilege as well. Privileges such as being overrepresented in media or earning more than the woman in the next cubicle who does the same job.

Those who don’t complain about SJWs are either people who know they don’t have anything to fear from the changes or who actually stand to win something. Like more money or movie heroes who look more like them. Or playable characters who don’t look like they swallow a bottle of steroids first thing in the morning. But everyone as they like. And that’s the actual point behind social justice.

A lot of demands made by SJWs are actually demands about diversity in general and diversifying certain things. About granting rights to people who didn’t have them already. In most cases (although not all, see slavery above), that doesn’t mean taking rights from someone else. Men don’t lose the right to vote when women are given it. They lose the privilege of being the only ones to control politics. Whites don’t lose the right to be free when blacks are given it. They lose cheap labour.

I imagine that if you happen to be on the side which has privileges, you might not even understand that there are people who don’t have them - or that you have privileges. If you always see straight white men as heroes, you might simply think that this is the order of things. Heroes need to be straight, white, and male. You will not even wonder what a movie would look like with a hero who’s not straight, not white, not male, or a combination of those ‘not’ things. But the women in the audience will at some point wonder why there’s no female hero doing awesome stuff who’s not dressed to please the male gaze. The POC in the audience will wonder why there’s no hero who looks more like them, even though there are many villains. LGBTQ+ people will wonder why the hero always has to be straight.

But when, at one long overdue point, the industry reacts and makes a woman or a POC or an LGBTQ+ person the lead, some of those who were happy with the regular hero get all worked up over it and start blaming SJWs for the loss of her usual hero. Instead of just leaning back and taking a look at the new one - or seeing another movie. Because, despite the occasional stab at more diversity, most heroes still are the same old - straight white men.

This is where it also becomes a topic for writers, though. Because writers are part of media and media has a chance to change things. There are many good reasons for more diversity in your cast, social justice is only one of them. You can tell more interesting stories with different heroes, because they’ll have different skills, different backgrounds, different ways of seeing things.

But you need to realize that sooner or later someone is probably going to accuse you of just doing it for social justice. Then you should make it clear that it’s great to be a SJW. Of course, you don’t have to be a warrior. You can also be a rogue, a mage, a priest, a paladin, or a member of many other classes.

The Trouble With Cosy Mystery Series

Cosy mysteries can be a lot of fun to read. They’re usually not as grim and dark as a thriller or police procedural would be, they are more likely to include average people as investigators, and there are a lot of different setting for them to be played out in. However, there’s also a big problem with cosy mystery series. It’s the suspension of disbelief.

If you write or read a mystery series based around a professional or semi-professional investigator, it’s a given that your main character will stumble over crimes in the wake of their work. A police detective, a P.I., or a lawyer might be forced to investigate a crime, even if it’s not 100% their job to do so. No matter how long the series is, a professional or semi-professional (this category also includes journalists, for whom investigation is also part of their work - and they might be part of the crime department of their paper) is bound to stumble over corpses. Well, not necessarily bound to, but it’s not unlikely for them to be faced with murders, either as a result of another crime, or just as a shortcut to an inheritance and suchlike.

Not so the main character of your regular cosy mystery. While it’s nice to see a regular person take on a case and solve it for a change, it gets harder and harder to believe that a mystery bookshop owner, a coffeehouse owner, a mystery writer, or another perfectly regular person would stumble over one corpse after another. Especially with “Murder, She Wrote,” as it were (the full series runs about 700 episodes - that’s at least 700 corpses, if not more). Jessica Fletcher might just as well be the most prolific serial killer of TV series history. It’s possible enough to stumble over a corpse once in your life. It’s still possible, even though not quite as likely, to stumble over a corpse twice in your life. But 700 times? That requires a huge suspension of disbelief.

A cosy mystery series I read lately (the “Adrien English Mysteries” by Josh Lanyon) recognizes it and makes a bit of fun of it, too. The first time, Adrien is drawn into the investigation because the victim was his employee and he’s a major suspect. The second time, he’s the first to find the victim and it all happens on his land. The third time, Jake Riordan (the detective on the case and by then his secret boyfriend - Jake is deep in the closet for most of the series), is already pointing out how strange it is for Adrien to stumble over all those cases. The fourth time, there’s outright suspicion towards Adrien for being close to so many bodies. The fifth time (the series is complete in five novels and one novella released some time later), the body has actually been in the second half of the house with Adrien’s bookshop in it for longer than Adrien has been alive, so he’s not really a suspect, but nobody except for him is in any hurry to find the murderer, either, not after 50 years.

A similar thing (the amateur sleuth becoming a suspect by being around bodies so often) happens in the “Holmes and Moriarity” series, where Christopher Holmes seems to walk into corpses with suspicious frequency. People notice, the police as well as his boyfriend. It’s addressed - unlike the 700 dead bodies in “Murder, She Wrote.”

For cosy mysteries, it can be a much better idea to write one-shots. One novel with one case a specific amateur sleuth or team of amateur sleuths is solving. Like this, suspension of disbelief is easily manageable, provided the hook to pull them into the case is strong enough. The other solution to the problem would, of course, be to use professionals or semi-professionals, but you might not want to do that for a reason.

There are a lot of reasons why an amateur might try their hands at solving a case. The police might not even see a case, because someone disappeared, but there’s no corpse and no proof they were killed. The police might target the amateur sleuth or someone close to them simply because they’re lazy - or because everything points to the sleuth, despite being innocent. The amateur sleuth might be in danger from the person who did the crime and they can’t go to the police (or the police doesn’t believe there’s danger for them). There is no police around for some reason (think of locked-door mysteries and those ‘out in the country in a storm’ manors).

It’s easy enough to have the sleuth solve one case like that. Two cases are possible. Three get suspicious. From four onwards, you need a good reason for your sleuth to go on - without getting a P.I. licence or suchlike.

I can surely understand the allure of a series with the same main characters. They can develop more deeply, because there’s several books during which character development happens. You can give the reader a feeling of ‘coming home,’ too, since they will come to know and recognize all the regulars of the series - not just the sleuth, but also their friends, family, and neighbours. You can also have some story arc which overlays the whole series (the “Adrien English Mysteries” do that with the relationship between Adrien and Jake). You don’t have to come up with a completely new cast for every new book. But in those cases, you should perhaps consider a professional investigator as the main lead. An inspector or a P.I. and a cosy setting don’t completely go against each other. You don’t have to get all dark and gritty, just because your main lead lives off solving crimes (although those cosy setting with many murders also get strange - ask about Midsomer or the cosy town of Rosenheim in Germany). But think of Christie’s Hercules Poirot stories. Poirot, a former head of police in Belgium, who also works as a private investigator every now and then, is to be considered a professional, yet the stories are not necessarily gritty and dark and full of blood. Use more ‘normal’ means of killing, such as stabbing, shooting, or poisoning, instead of dismemberments and the nailing of the parts to seven different doors. As long as the tone, the characters, and the content fit together, everything is still fine.

Cosy mystery series rely a lot on the writer’s ability to make people believe their sleuth, despite not being professionally involved with crimes, will have to solve crimes over and over again. The more often it happens, the more suspension of disbelief it needs. That is a problem you need to keep in mind when you decide to write one.

Halloween is Murder Review

I’ve read quite a bit by Josh Lanyon during the last few weeks (I’ve been reading a lot recently, full stop) and while I love the series I’ve read (Holmes & Moriarity and The Art of Murder), I want to write a review for the shortest, but also most entertaining story by her I’ve read so far. That one is the short novella “Halloween is Murder.”

Until I stumbled over this small gem, all stories by Lanyon which incorporated a supernatural element explained it perfectly naturally in the end. Even the seemingly supernatural threat in “The Curse of the Blue Scarab” and the apparition in “A Ghost of a Chance” had perfectly natural explanations. “Halloween is Murder” does not and it revels in its supernatural themes, because Barry Fitzgerald, the main and viewpoint character, does not believe in the supernatural - until it literally tries to kill him. His friend (and mostly unrequited love) Mike on the other hand is very familiar with supernatural creatures from Irish/Gaelic mythology. Which is another reason why I really enjoyed the novella - vampires based on Dracula have been done a lot, but this novella was the second time I heard a mythical vampire from Gaelic mythology mentioned (including the fact that the guy was on the short side).

Lanyon can write several different styles, if she puts her mind to it. I’ve seen that before in “The Curse of the Blue Scarab,” which does a good job at posing as a Victorian novel. For “Halloween is Murder,” she worked with the 1950s/1960s hard-boiled noir style and she did so very well. The story doesn’t get too grim, though, because of the underlying humour of the situation and the many references to horror creatures and suchlike. Among others, the story features a Sleepy Hollow Drive (where Barry’s sister and brother-in-law live) and a Bela-Lugosi-lookalike going by the name of ‘Collins’ (as in Barnabas Collins).

Like all of her stories, “Halloween is Murder” includes a male-male romance, in this case between the viewpoint character Barry and his friend and almost partner (at the Bell, Book and Cannon agency) Mike. Three years ago, Barry saved Mike from suicide (by tackling him and dragging him off to feed him), since then Mike has saved him several times as well (two times at the beginning of the story - three times, if you follow Mike’s arguments). This year, Mike has asked Barry to come with him to a fishing trip at Crowley Lake and Barry wanted to come, but did nevertheless not do it, claiming he needed to work. The true reason is he’s not sure whether to advance or not - whether to breach the topic of a possible romantic/sexual relationship or not. Mike is taller and stronger than Barry, so in hindsight, while sitting in his office on Halloween, Barry thinks he should have come along, because he could have nursed the black eye or two in peace somewhere far from civilisation, if he’d misinterpreted Mike’s actions so far.

For me, the story was a quick and very enjoyable read both times I’ve read it so far. It’s the shortest story from Lanyon I’ve read (including any of the three “I Spy…” novellas), but it’s fun and it feels complete - there’s no reason why it should have been longer than it is. The story is very nice, playing with the reader as much as with its characters (both female characters - the ‘dame’ who hires Barry and his own sister - have the same two first names, only switched, for instance). The supernatural elements are done very well - which makes me wonder whether or not one of the other stories of Lanyon’s I haven’t read yet is just as well done with real supernatural elements. The final coming together (nope, not in that way - first of her stories I’ve read which doesn’t include a sex scene) doesn’t seem contrived, even if Barry is very surprised at Mike suddenly turning up in time to save his life for a third (or fourth) time. And, as mentioned, I love the big vampire (big in power, but not in body). The character comes from Gaelic mythology, as does Mike’s ancestor whose blood makes Mike a good person to fight off supernatural threats. It’s much nicer than the hundreds of variation of the classic vampire based on Dracula (or even the much rarer lesbian vampire based on Carmilla). It’s new, it’s fun (the fact that Barry can’t pronounce the man’s name is especially fun), and it’s a nice addition to vampire lore. I hope to see that guy around a little more often in the future. So far, I’ve heard/read the name only twice - once in a very good documentary on Dracula and Stoker (who, as an Irishman who spent the first seven years of his life in bed with a severe illness, was well versed in the mythology of his ancestors) and once in “Halloween is Murder.”

If you want a story which, despite its topic, is a fun and light-hearted read, I can only recommend “Halloween is Murder.” It’s not expensive and well-written with an interesting story.

About Using Public Domain Characters

After watching this video on YouTube about Robin Hood and King Arthur (and why there’s no good modern movie about either of them), I started thinking about public domain characters (PDC from here on). Unlike modern characters, characters written during the last 50 to 70 years (depending on the laws of your country), writing about PDCs doesn’t get you into trouble. It’s not just about writing fan fiction. You are free to use those characters, because nobody still holds the rights and that means nobody can stop you from writing about them.

Because of this, Hollywood and the TV studios make a lot of use of PDCs. They’re a cheap resource, since there’s no rights to pay for and nobody who will tell you when you’re doing them wrong. Well, the latter probably isn’t right - the audience will tell you when you’re doing them wrong. And that is, in essence, the content of the video I linked to above. The art of using a character in a new setting or of telling a different kind of story with them is to know their roots, their core. You need to understand the basics of their story, the essentials which you can’t take away. Sherlock Holmes, who has been done excellently for a long time and in a lot of different ways, right up to “House M.D.,” is The Detective. As long as you have him solve complicated cases (even if they’re medical cases), you will do his character justice. Give him a chronicler and assistant, no matter whether or not the name is Watson, and it will work. “Elementary” gender-switched two main characters from the source material with Joan Watson and Jaime Moriarty, but the series still is true to Sherlock Holmes as he was originally conceived. The same goes for other current versions of him, such as the BBC series “Sherlock” (which is less inventive with the characters, but also puts him into a modern setting) or the two movies with Robert Downy Jr. in the lead. There are many versions of Sherlock Holmes, but they all share the core of the great, if sometimes arrogant and insufferable, detective.

Yet, the last good version of King Arthur was made in 1981 (“Excalibur”) and the last good version of Robin Hood was made in 1991 (“King of Thieves”). ‘Good’ in this case means successful. Since then, all versions have more or less flopped. Why? Because they didn’t keep true to the core. This goes, of course, only for the movie versions - there were some good TV series based on the material in the 2000s. One reason for it might be the ‘dark and gritty’ trend which has been around since the 2000s and is still around today. And, of course, the whole ‘origin movie’ craze as well.

Now, you might wonder, what is the problem with ‘dark and gritty?’ Isn’t more realism always good? Actually, no. The main problem with ‘dark and gritty’ is not the trend as a such, but the stories they try to apply it to.

Robin Hood is, at its core, a hopeful story. The story about a group of men (the Merry Men, no less) who withstand evil authority and stand for those who can’t fight for themselves. Robin Hood isn’t just a thief - he’s a thief who steals from the rich (who, in the middle ages, very well might have gotten rich by stealing from the poor) and gives to the poor. Robin Hood is the man who stands by the true king of England, Richard Lionheart, and not by his evil brother John. He opposes the evil Sheriff of Nottingham (who was never portrayed better than by Alan Rickman in “Prince of Thieves” - proof me wrong) and defends the populace from abuse. That is, in a nutshell, who Robin Hood is. You can transport him forward in time just as easily as Sherlock Holmes, if you want to. But you need to make him the same kind of person. A heist movie would be a good choice for Robin Hood - have him gather a band of specialists (aka the Merry Men) and take money or other things from a corrupt politician (Prince John in modern guise) and his head of security (the Sheriff of Nottingham). Voila, you’ve made a modern Robin Hood.

King Arthur is an ideal king who rules over a peaceful, united England with the help of his knights, all of whom are virtuous and kind. That is the core of King Arthur - together with a huge junk of mythology and magic. Not just Merlin, although he plays a big role, but so much more. The Sword in the Stone which legitimizes the formerly unknown and officially common boy as the new king. The Lady of the Lake who gives him Excalibur, the sword which will lead him from victory to victory and will protect him from harm (well, the sheath will). His half-sister Morgan Le Fay who opposes him with magic and deceit - going so far as to deceive him so she can have his son Mordred, the man who is destined to destroy the perfect kingdom. The nymph Nemain who lures Merlin from Arthur’s side and robs the king of his most important advisor. The priestesses of Avalon who come and take Arthur away at the end of his life - with the promise that he will be back when England needs him. All of this is not a core for a dark and gritty and realistic story. Mordred joining the Round Table is when things start to go wrong and he is the one who will mortally wound his own father - but there will be no kingdom left for him to inherit. If you want dark and gritty, the last part of the story will provide it, but you can’t start out that way. You need the brightness and hope of Camelot first. If you want to make a different version of it, why not transport them to the far future? Arthur rules a galaxy or at least a sun system. His knights keep the peace and the law and quite some magic can, in this setting, be replaced with technology. After all, all technology which is advanced far enough can’t be distinguished from magic any longer. And, despite what some people might think, the story of King Arthur also is a great chance to bring in diversity.

The core is the problem with many modern retellings. Or, rather, that the creators didn’t think enough about the core of a PDC they wanted to bring back. I’m currently working on a story about Fantomas, another PDC. His core is the ruthless criminal mastermind who can look like every person he wants to and makes good use of that ability in his deeds. It’s easy to push him into modern times, even though he first turned up in 1910. The German Dr. Mabuse is a similar character, although he relies on hypnotism instead of masquerades (and, maybe, I’ll give him a chance one day, too).

Characters in public domain are free for the taking and, like fan fiction of still-owned properties, they can be used at will. But to use them well means to look at the original stories and identify the core of those stories before you write your own. Then you can create all kinds of interesting media with them.